In keeping with our normal workday, we received a seemingly unpremeditated call that a cottage on Howard street in the historic district was being demolished. We quickly rushed to the address and began salvaging before it could be dumpstered. It was a typical home, with antique heart pine siding, flooring, joists etc. from the original construction in 1882, exactly the kind of high grade grain we look for, and coincided with a shipment of antique heart pine flooring for a home in New Jersey we are about to begin. We took some pictures to show how it goes:

The house before it lost its second-floor hat.

One of the many massive structural beams of the house. Like the bone of a skeleton.

The true gold: massive inch and a half tongue and groove flooring, and its support joist. The white streaks are plaster marks from the original plaster coating. You can see the tightness of the grain from this beautiful old-growth wood.

If you look closely there are visible saw marks on the beam, which we often use for tabletop wood, like those at NOLAJane.

Lovely structural 2x4s holding up the walls. You can also see the old wooden siding used.

On the left: the wood as we brought in it, and on the right, a finished batch of flooring. It's really quite a transformation. To get there, we detail all the beams to make sure they can be safely processed, then size and cut them as we need.